The left used a racist smear in their failed attempt to destroy the nomination
of Attorney General John Ashcroft. This action placed on notice any conservative
who becomes too outspoken. Had Ashcroft ever expressed a dislike of people
of African ancestry? Had he conspired to prevent a black person from getting
a job because of his race? Such charges against Ashcroft would have been
ludicrous, but this was exactly what the left was implying. They twisted
the concept of racism to serve their agenda. This smear was an ugly attempt
at character assassination and a high tech lynching of an uppity conservative.

The hate campaign against Ashcroft raises basic questions in terms of
the degree in which racism is a problem in America today. My grandparents
immigrated to this country around the turn of the century and quickly
assimilated into the white dominated culture so I don't claim to know
what it's like to be black in America. Blacks, no doubt, regularly deal
with various and sundry slights, insults, and worse. I've had problems
as a conservative amongst liberals, as a conservative Jew amongst liberal
Jews, and as a Jew amongst conservative Christians. While these things
are hurtful, nothing is as bad as being treated poorly because of race.

Since the 1950's, legally sanctioned racism, or Jim Crow, has been abolished,
social mores have changed for the better, and racism, in the literal sense,
no longer holds enough influence to prevent advancement. Racist attitudes
represent a dark side of human nature and will never entirely disappear
or, as Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "you can't legislate the human
heart." In their utopian zeal, the left seeks to eradicate racism
by using the gun-backed power of the state. History has demonstrated that
the only thing eradicated by authoritarian schemes is freedom.

The civil rights movement was a moral, essentially Christian movement.
Like most organic movements, it sought to free people from oppressive
situations. Blacks demanded an end to government imposed Jim Crow and
segregation. They sought greater participation in the free market system.
The government was urged to remove racist laws. The left sought to invert
the process with race identity propaganda and agitation for authoritarian
solutions.

As the left has done with freedom movements throughout history, they
harnessed the civil rights movement to serve their agenda of expanding
government. They did this by infiltrating the movement with communists
and fellow travelers, and by compromising the existing leadership with
financial, media, and other favors. Rather than encouraging blacks to
advance themselves, the left created the dialectic of hate by encouraging
blacks to hate whites.

Carmichael during a 1960s speech in Los Angeles

By the mid to late 1960's, the movement was co-opted by communist radicals
such as Stokeley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, the Black
Panthers, and a plethora of others who espoused Marxist ideas of violence,
hate, and revolution. They were quietly controlled by the predominantly
white left operating from the comfortable confines of foundations, the
media, academia, and the government itself. The radicals were supplied
with money, media attention, and favors. They instigated riots, looting,
burning of cities, and a level of violence and misery that continues to
this day.

The establishment left responded to the manufactured crisis by increasing
the size of government with the "war on poverty" and welfare.
These racist programs fostered a permanent and institutionalized poverty.
They accelerated the destruction of the black family resulting in a myriad
of self-perpetuating social ills. The introduction of drugs brought things
to the boiling point.

The left is the primary force of racism in America and the only form
of racism that stands in the way of genuine progress for blacks. Their
government run schools teach racist propaganda such as Multiculturalism,
which, rather than fostering a self-sufficient individual, teach identification
with an arbitrary bundle of cultural precepts. Schools have caused the
tripling of illiteracy within the black population since the 1950's with
their asinine whole language method of teaching the phonetic English language.
The vast majority of the black prison population today is illiterate and
this is no accident.

The left seeks to suppress economic opportunity by advocating more taxes
and a government run "social security" retirement plan that
pays no interest on the workingman's dollar and leaves nothing to beneficiaries.
Rather than removing racist legal barriers, the left seeks the re implementation
of quotas under the banner of affirmative action. Encouraging accomplishment,
talent, and the use of private pressure in genuinely racist situations
would lead to empowerment instead of dependency. The criminalizing of
racist expression, however hurtful that expression may be, is a tyrannical
intrusion. If racism were a crime in America, our prisons would be filled
with leftists.